Saturday, February 15, 2014

Everything Is Awesome

As the title probably doesn't suggest, I recently saw the new Lego Movie.
I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone but I was relatively sad that it was CGI animated and not stop motion (although it did do it's best to look like a stop-motion film) and that the film had the same old plot that's been done an infinite number of times in kids movies (trust me, you've seen this movie before under a trillion different titles already). Oh and they completely screwed up Batman's personality (although I suppose one could argue that there's a difference between The Batman and Lego Batman).
Despite that, I thought the film was pretty harmless, the moral (albeit one that's been done to death) is still an important lesson for kids and it did make me want to go play with my Legos again.

Which brings me to what this post is about.
Before I was as into baseball cards as I am now, I had another obsession hobby. LEGO.
I absolutely loved Lego. I had a ton of play sets (mostly Star Wars themed) and and every once in a while I do suddenly get the urge to just spend an entire day just playing with Lego blocks.
Occasionally I even bring my old hobby and new hobby together,

I know that I need a Boba, I'm working on it!

Or at least I would if I had any idea how.
I've always struggled to bring these two together. It's kind of like the pizza and ice cream effect where you like them both but can't really combine them.
I suppose that it could be because I'm not creative or "artsy" enough to come up with a way to bring them together, especially now that I'm a boring adult-ish person. The closest I ever got to bringing these two together usually just resulted in me creating a house with Lego and leaning a card against one of the walls.

Despite the compatibility issue (that probably only I have) Lego and baseball cards do have one thing in common.
That's right, they're both ungodly expensive.

Well okay I suppose they do have a few more things in common. Like how they're both (usually) sold in boxes, how one company has the industry on lock/near-lock, how you can get used "singles" you want for a cheaper price on the secondhand market (although Lego minifigures cost A LOT more than 90% of baseball cards) and that they're both sold in single packs where you have no idea what you're going to get (although I suppose that's just for the minifigures series).
Speaking of which I picked up a trio of those minifigure packs seen above after seeing the movie (yes I'm a sheep, BAA!) and I managed to hit two of the minifigs I was kind of hoping to get.

Emmet (the film's protagonist/hero)

Wyldstyle (Emmet's love interest)

Emmet and Wyldstyle (Lucy) are two of the film's main characters. The Emmet minifigure has another facial expression on his head (an even happier one) and the Wyldstyle/Lucy seen here is a disguise version (she's usually wearing a hoodie in the film) and is, kind of, dressed like how women used to dress when they attended baseball games.
Attention baseball fans, please bring back the suits and dresses! No more casual T-shirts or replica jerseys with grease stains on them. At least have the decency to look like you're from the past when your favorite teams are wearing throwback jerseys. Thank you.

Larry The Barista

My last minifig was Larry The Barista who I think was only in the movie for like 5 seconds. Warning, the coffee in his hand will cost you 37 bucks. Still cheaper than Starbucks though.

Anyway I suppose my search of the perfect way to combine LEGOs and baseball cards still continues and will probably never end. But if any of you have any ideas/suggestions on how these might go together or have any stories of playing with both (if you collected both that is) I'd love to hear them.

As always I'd like to thank those of you who've managed to last this long and read my unfocused ramblings. Take care and make sure you don't step on any Lego blocks ;).

According to Lego's official website, Lego blocks started being distributed to the public in 1949 (originally just in Denmark). I'm not entirely sure when Lego came to the US, but it appears as though it arrived during sometime in the 50's.Anyway, I'd say a good 90% of the blogosphere has collected cards in their youth and played with Legos. Almost all card collectors (in any generation) must've encountered both at one point in their lives.

mark me in the 10% then.... started collecting cards at around 7 years old and never did the legos thing.... ertl farm and construction toys and lincoln logs were in there but never hot wheels or legos...